Pansy by Any Other Name
by Aria Nereid Fassa
Summary: our hero makes a marriage proposal.


Pansy by Any Other Name  
By Del C ( ronwheezy@ hotpop.com )  
Standard Disclaimer: Harry Potter and all related characters and concepts are the intellectual property of JKR.  
A/N: Just a tiny lil ficlet accidentally inspired by Queen Emily. i'm actually not terribly 'shippy toward this particular pairing, just had an idea after Emily emailed me so i have no explanation for how they got together in the first place. if you like you can just think of this as taking place in the Wildest Dreams continuum. that is, unless there's something here that jarringly conflicts with what listmum Amy's written, i didn't check to see. sowwy.  
  
* * *  
  
"I don't quite know how to do this, so..."  
  
She stared at the small green-velvet-covered jeweler's box he'd just pressed into her hands. She didn't open it, not yet. Didn't have to. She knew the jeweler's shop it was from, had been there a week ago. By herself. How had he found out? White-knuckled, her hands clutched the box as though it contained an exceedingly rare and fragile antidote to one of those virulent poisons that Professor Snape had lectured them on not so very long ago in the Hogwarts dungeons.  
  
"Are you thinking that if you accept my proposal, your name is going to be Pansy Potter?" he asked her with a wry grin.  
  
"Actually, that did occur to me after we started going out - well...sneaking around is more like it," she said matter-of-factly, with an answering smile. "But it's not so bad. I mean, there's a _Poppy Pomfrey_ too... Or maybe I could go by _Pansy Parkinson-Potter_."  
  
He chuckled. "That's quite a mouthful."   
  
"Mouthful? I'll give you a mouthful!" she said mock-threateningly. There was no speaking for a little while after that. Well...not with words. Then she pulled away reluctantly from his lips and commented, "Still, you have to agree Pansy Parkinson-Potter is easier to say than Justin Finch-Fletchley. Whatever happened to him, anyway?"  
  
Affectionately he rubbed his nose against hers, the very same nose he used to compare to a pug's, which he now liked to call her "ski-jump nose" - not that he was entirely sure what a ski jump looked like; the Dursleys'd never taken him skiing. "Last I heard from Parvati Patil, he'd eloped to Brazil with Susan Bones."  
  
"Imagine that! Who'd have thought that Hufflepuff Mudblood could do something quite so daring?"  
  
"Pansy..." he said warningly.  
  
She winced and pursed her mouth ruefully. "Oh. Right." Old habits died hard. Slowly she eased out of his arms and purposefully sat at arm's length away on the chesterfield. "So. Still want to marry me, Potter?"  
  
His eyes looked straight into hers. "Yes. I do."   
  
Her doubts fizzled into nothing in the seemingly acid green candor of his gaze. With a tentative smile she could feel her eyes beginning to well up, and she seized both his hands, only to quickly release them and fling her arms around his neck.  
  
"So. This mean you'll marry me, Parkinson?"  
  
She felt his pleased chuckle vibrate in his chest. "Not so fast," she joked. "First let's see if this bauble you got me meets my high standards."  
  
"Alright, I'm curious about what it looks like too."   
  
Disentangling herself, she grabbed handfuls of his robe sleeves and looked up at him in alarm. "You bought this without even knowing what it looks like?"  
  
"Seven days ago I saw Justin and Susan coming out of a jeweler's shop in Diagon Alley and while I was deciding whether I should go over and say hello to them, you came along and went into the store so I stood outside the display window and watched you at the counter. When you left I told the jeweler I wanted the ring you'd been looking at and to just put it in a box. Then I left, and I've been trying to find the right moment to ask you. And now I have."  
  
Her expression was a study in amazed incredulity. "That is either the most romantic, or the foolhardiest purchase I ever heard of. Or both." Her voice took on an echo of that particular lofty disdain he used to hear much more often from her in the past: "You are such a Gryffindor."  
  
"Ah, but you like that about me," said he, waggling his eyebrows. "Come on, open it already. Did I get the right one?"  
  
"You tell me." She turned the box in her hands toward him and opened it so he could see. "One-carat octagonal-cut Colombian emerald the exact same color as your eyes. It's set in a platinum band."  
  
A slow smile grew on his face as she described the ring; he covered her hands with his larger, Quidditch-callused ones and turned the box toward her. "Then...this looks about right, doesn't it?"  
  
She gave a choked little scream then, the floodgates of her tear ducts gave way, she threw herself bodily into his waiting arms that closed around her once more. "That's the one. I always thought you had the damnedest luck, Potter," she whispered in his ear.  
  
"So make this my lucky day and say you'll marry me. I need to hear you say the words."  
  
"Of course I'll marry you. I'd've thought that was obvious already, you obtuse Gryffindor."  
  
And that is how Harry James Potter, The Boy Who Lived, became engaged, and subsequently married to Pansy Parkinson, The Girl Who Liked Bling-Bling (But Not Half as Much as She Liked Him). The end.  
  
  
green eyes / yeah the spotlight shines upon you / and how could anybody deny you? - Coldplay 


End file.
